Halo for the Hangman's Noose
by headup-gorgeous
Summary: She enjoyed the sick rush the sight her husband's demolished skull brought her. Her daughter was dead due to her weakness and flaws. She learned to fire a gun and wheeled a knife full well knowing they would be used on the living as well as the Walkers. [one-shot/warning! abuse & sexual assault!]


**Rating:** PG-16+  
 **Word Count:** 1,500  
 **Warning:** References to Abuse and Sexual Assault. Carol's mind takes a slight dip into the gutter.  
 **Spoilers:** S1 is tossed around, cherry-picked one or two things up to S7 and I wove my own Carol childhood.

 **Disclaimer:** I own neither TWD. It has been a few years for me and this is unbeta'd so please pardon the mess.

* * *

Beth Green was dead. Brain matter dusting Rick with a fine mist that even to this day she didn't think he would fully be able to remove. Everything innocent, soft and good that flickered in this hellhole of a world had been snuffed out with the death of a single girl in that hallway and while only one of their group was lifeless on that tile floor, Carol knew that two hearts were no longer beating.

The blonde haired sister and daughter was cold in the ground and there were still days that Carol couldn't believe that she was gone. Holding a crying Judith, she would glance around for the teenager for help, only to meet Daryl's broken gaze and suddenly remember the emptiness now lurking within their family.

Carol was glad that Hershel was dead.  
He would never have to know the pain of dying before ones' children.

Carol's whole life had been training and discipline to be good, by hook or by crook. Her mother, soft-spoken and docile, was the perfect woman as her father had always reminded her. Usually accompanied by the harsh snap of leather across her back or before he shoved her into the closet for days at a time, acknowledging her presence only by banging on the door when she made the slightest sound. _Shut your trap Carol, men don't want to hear women and if I have to remind you again._

Over and over; days, weeks, months, years as he molded her.  
Good Christian, good daughter, good wife, good mother.

Good.  
Good.  
Good.

All she wanted was to be good. She slaved for it and bled for it. Had it carved into her marrow, mind and muscle.  
Ed had made sure of that one night with the help of Jack Daniels and the broken bottle it left behind.

And it worked, even after the Turn, Carol Peletier continued to be good. Sure she lusted after a man she wasn't married to, even before she drove a pickaxe into her husband's skull, the same man who she had prayed for night after night to die. She drank, never to excess and there were some nights deep in the dark when she wished to "opt out" and just be done with it.

But through all of that, Carol knew that in her heart, she remained a good woman.

When she saw Beth Greene though, she knew deep down that all of those reassurances and white lies she whispered to herself were false. The green-eyed blonde was good incarnate, an angel with the voice to match. Carol had only been playing at being good.

She enjoyed the sick rush the sight her husband's demolished skull brought her. Her daughter was dead due to her weakness and flaws. She learned to fire a gun and wheeled a knife full well knowing they would be used on the living as well as the Walkers.

She lusted and love a man who had never and would never be hers. Moments watching his toned and muscular arms bare, fingers nimble and effective coupled with the way his pants clung just right to his legs drove her in moments of privacy to slide her fingers under her clothes to find her nipples already hard and her pussy wet and burning. It never took her long and only years of being beaten into silence allowed her to release without the concern of his name echoing through the air.

Beth Greene would love a man like Daryl the way he deserved, soft and gentle.  
Carol Peletier would look at him and be torn between making love and the urge to wreak him.

Over the time the group had been together, Carol knew that she had a special bond with the quiet and stand-off hunter. The search for her daughter, the shared past of equal parts abuses and neglect had left them uniquely able to understand each other. Growing, they learned together that caring didn't always have to hurt and touches weren't just to hurt. She was giving allowances and leeway not otherwise allowed, joking, light touches, and half smiles.

First, she thought that it was her that was healing him but gradually saw it working both ways. She mothered the group with both protection and comfort, spoke her mind and felt her emotions in ways that were both foreign and familiar. She sought safety in others where before only expected injury and danger.

If this time and man had saved her, perhaps it meant that they and her could do that same for her stoic and distant Daryl.

But when she had seen them in the hallway, Beth's arms wrapped around the hunter who returned the affection with none of the usual reserve even she had received Carol knew that in that moment that that he wasn't waiting for the right time to open up but the right person.

And it wasn't her.

He didn't want her, and as she reached for that car door Rick had locked against her she realized the group didn't either.

No one could do it alone, but she did.

Even after the fall of the prison, she learned, they each had some part of the group to hold on to.  
They fought, bled and hid. Forming new bonds and strengthening their need for one another.

And while Carol knew that she wasn't a good person, she did one last good thing when she rescued Dixon and the group. Not _her_ Daryl and not _her_ group. Not anymore.

Even after, when all her instincts told her to flee, she had stayed to try and bring them back together.  
Rick to Judith, Tyreese to Sasha. Daryl to Beth.

But she had failed, and for the first time knew how Daryl felt watching her baby Sophia shamble out of that barn knowing that she hadn't done enough. She understood his urge to run away and hide.

He hadn't been able to, but she could. And as she watched the only man she had ever love stand there broken and lost it in a way not even Merle's death had done, she knew that she would. But first, she allowed herself to hide from his sight for a moment and look at him. To really see him, the man that he had become and she always knew he could be.

Surrounded by his ghosts. She knew the faces of some of them; Merle, and Beth. Opposites sides of a coin, both loved and feared for what they represented. Carol knew something about the ghosts' people carried, the harsh banging of her father's fists, the panicked and desperate face of Sophia gazing at her under the car, the feel of Ed's hard cock forcing himself inside of dry and exploited passage, smell of her mother skin mixed metallic from the cut on her lip as she whispered soft words into her daughter's ear.

Her mother had told her about love, that it saves and heals. It was a magical thing to her in a world where things only maimed and hurt.

 _She saved your life too right?_ It ways that I couldn't. She taught you love and hope, all the good things in this world.

 _We're not dead, that's what you said._ But Jesus, there were moments where I wish I was.

 _I can't let myself.._ Stay with you, treat the way as before, remember things before. I can't let myself feel.

 _You have to let yourself feel it._ And while love isn't something for me anymore, you my Pookie, need it. It is something you crave and desire. While it comes with pain and heartache, both things I never wished for you, that emotion is something that I know only makes you stronger. All it ever did was make me weak. _  
You will._ I know you Daryl Dixon.

As she brushed the hair from his forehead, she felt her heart both ache and strength at the wary look in his eyes at her touch in a way she hadn't seen in a while. Feeling the resistance in him as she pulled his head down to press her lips to her forehead, she knew that this was their end.

The rush of happiness at being in his arms when she appeared in the woods, his head burrowed into the crook of her neck with look of almost wonder at seeing her again would be the memories she would try and hold onto when she packed her bag and took off.

Not this.

As she turned to head back to camp, leaving him with his pain and her words, Carol thoughts went back to what it meant to be good. Her hands were stained with blood, mind with needs and heart with lusts but everything she did now that was selfless and good revolved around that man behind her.

Just like she broke her body to save his, she now used her heart to salvage his.

He needs something pure and unblemished even now as he tried to hide and forget. She didn't just tell him that it was okay to feel, but that he was worth it. Feeling gave him the ability to heal and grow, took a good man and made him stronger.

What she wanted was to take him in her arms and shower him with her love, but that was selfish past.

Walking away she reflected that the last thing she did as a good person, she would do for Daryl Dixon, was tell herself that she wasn't just that person.


End file.
